


It's Not Spying if You Don't Call it Spying

by jilliancares



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ??? - Freeform, M/M, Secret Relationship, i guess, kind of, klance, listen it's 3am, so this is what we're getting, spying ???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 20:27:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jilliancares/pseuds/jilliancares
Summary: Turns out everyone is spying on Lance and Keith's blossoming relationship.





	It's Not Spying if You Don't Call it Spying

**Author's Note:**

> it's three in the morning and school starts in six days and i am Not Ready but this is here i hope someone likes it <3

Pidge was a curious person. It was something that extended to all areas of her life, whether that meant she was taking apart a toaster at the ripe old age of six to figure out how it worked or spying on her friends in her free time. It wasn’t like it was an  _active decision_ , it was just something that  _happened_  to her. She’d see someone down the hall, maybe walking kind of like wherever they were going was a secret, and Pidge would accidentally on purpose find herself following. Nothing serious.

Anyway, it wasn’t like she would ever tell anyone what she found. The secrets she gleaned from her less-than-honorable spying sessions were for her alone—and in extreme cases could maybe be used later for blackmail. But mainly it was just to satisfy her own curiosity. Like now, for example.

It was commonplace for her to be unable to sleep. There was all the stress from defending the universe and trying to find her family with any scraps of information she could salvage, not to mention the fact that without the actual sun her circadian rhythm was a bit out of wack—meaning her body liked to think that now was never the right time for bed, even when she’d been up for 36 hours straight. Which was why she often found herself holing up in random corners of the castleship, maying secretly taking apart and putting back together a random Altean invention, or simply sitting in a dimly lit area to think.

But, being up so often as she was, she normally knew the going-ons that happened at night. She knew when Lance crept out of his bed occasionally, his face glistening with tell-tail tear tracks as he made his way to Hunk’s room. Pidge guessed that this was the doing of nightmares or possibly just the thoughts that were likely to attack at night, the ones that berated your mind with thoughts of things you missed and were scared of and might never see again. She knew when Hunk got up in the middle of the night to bake something strange. She knew when Shiro walked the halls, still asleep, enacting some dream or flashback that she couldn’t get to him through—could only lead him back to his room. She knew when Keith trained until the early hours of the morning, when Allura snuck down to the room Alfor’s AI used to inhabit, when Coran stared out the control room into the endless space beyond, looking for all the world like he was wide awake.

And because she knew all these things, had observed them enough during her waking nights to know what was normal, she knew what was decidedly  _not_  normal. Such as Keith and Lance walking into the kitchen together, their voices too quiet for her to hear. The moments that the two were quiet and kind were rare, far and few in between, and Pidge felt like she’d found something magical to have witnessed it like this. Part of her thought that they should be disagreeing more than usual in the middle of the night, the lack of sleep making them crankier than usual. But a bigger part of her knew that, regardless of what time it actually was, there was something about the late, late hours of the night that opened the heart and loosened the tongue. She’d just never have expected it to happen to these two idiots.

It wasn’t hard for her to ignore her moral code (she hardly had one anyway) and follow them down the dark halls once they left the kitchen. She’d only known they were in there anyway because of the update she’d installed into her handheld device herself—it let her know where people were in the castle at all times, which was helpful for whenever she needed to find someone. Everyone else seemed to just think she had incredible intuition, which she didn’t mind letting them believe.

Anyway, she observed them from around the corner as they sat down on opposite sides of the hall. Lance’s bedroom was on one side, Keith’s on the other, but neither boy entered their room. Lance leaned against the wall, his legs spread out all akimbo and his hands gesturing as he talked like always, though maybe a little more subdued with exhaustion. Keith sat with his legs crossed, which was just so  _Keith_  it made Pidge want to snort in amusement—she held it back, not wanting to ruin her spying purposes.

She only stayed to watch them for a couple of minutes. They were both clearly drifting, both dead on their feet—or their asses, really—and she assumed they’d be going to bed any minute now. Besides, it wasn’t like she could actually hear what they were saying, which was annoying but also gave her ideas for an invention she could maybe make…

So when Pidge went back to the lab, jotting down random ideas for an eavesdropping device (which, come on, could totally come in handy with the Galra, so like. Perfect excuse right there) it was in full confidence that Lance and Keith would be back in their beds within the hour. It was only when she was finally flagging, ready to stumble off to bed herself, when she thought to check her handheld, to see if they were still around.

They were.

Curiosity was  _strong_. Even exhausted, even with her eyelids seeming to be weighing her down, she managed to go all the way back to their neighboring bedrooms to see what they could  _possibly_  still be talking about.

And this time she really couldn’t hold back a snort, because these idiots weren’t even talking! They were both asleep, both passed out on the floor, Lance with his head leaned back against the wall and Keith with his chin to his chest. Shaking her head, Pidge swore to have her eavesdropping invention ready the next time they decided to have a midnight chat like this one.

—

It wasn’t Hunk’s fault he was nosy. It was probably in his genetics, woven into his DNA. Some small part of him that left him bug-eyed and mouth watering when he came across something that he could put a minimum amount of effort into to gain more information on the subject. For example, reading Pidge’s diary when she left it sitting in plain sight (like her bedside table), or pestering someone bad at keeping secrets (Lance) for the gossip they had on others. And so it was only natural, woven into his very genetic makeup, for Hunk to investigate when he began to realize there was something up between Keith and Lance.

And for once, he didn’t mean up as in another fight, another dumb dispute that they had gotten into which inevitably had people picking sides and the whole thing turning into Lance-and-Hunk-and-Pidge against Keith-and-Shiro-and-Allura-and-maybe-Coran. It took longer for Hunk to realize something was up this time around, because there was nothing for him  _to_  notice. There  _wasn’t_  any bickering, no yelling across the room or taunting or teasing or challenging. Instead they were both quiet, lately, and as Hunk began observing them, he noticed that sometimes they’d catch each other’s eyes and smile.

And that’s when Hunk knew something was  _definitely_  up. Keith rarely smiled, and even more rarely at  _Lance_. If Hunk didn’t know Lance better, he would wonder if he’d done something to poison Keith and mess with his mind or something.

Eventually, Hunk figured that since Lance was so bad at keeping secrets, he might be able to just ask him what was up. It’d certainly be easier than trying to sneak around the castleship and figure it out for himself, especially when he was already pretty bad at the sneaking part. He tended to be pretty clumsy and almost always knocked something over with a loud crash when he was trying to be silent.

“Lance,” Hunk said one night after dinner. Dinner was Lance’s favorite part of the day—he knew because Lance had told him himself.  _It reminds me of home,_  he’d admitted.  _You know, my family was so big, it was always so loud and crazy and_ great _, but my mom always managed to get all of us together for dinner._

Almost since the beginning Hunk had felt like their team was a family, and he was pretty sure Lance thought so too. It was one of the reasons he put so much effort into their dinners. Instead of letting everyone drift off and eat on their own like they were wont to do for their other meals of the day, he managed to gather them all for dinner, every night. He was pretty sure they all liked it, really. Conversation always flowed, accompanied with laughter and anecdotes and smiles and food. No matter how hectic the day, dinner was always good. It was because of this that Hunk figured it’d be extra safe to confront Lance after dinner, his nerves already at ease.

“What’s up my dude?” Lance said, spinning around to snap and point at Hunk with a set of finger guns. “Is this about dinner tonight? Because I know I told you I could sing praise about it for a quintant but I actually am about to go to bed.”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Hunk said, squashing down his pride at Lance’s words. He cooked dinner for them often, though sometimes Coran insisted on making something, which they usually did their best to force down. Sometimes they outright refused, stopping by on a near planet for an alien equivalent of fast food. “It’s just—is something up between you and Keith?”

“What?” Lance’s eyes had gone wide, his face pale. Hunk wondered if something really  _was_  wrong. Maybe they weren’t speaking because their arguing was already commonplace; maybe the natural angry progression of that wasn’t to argue more but to argue less.

“It’s just… you guys have kind of mellowed out recently, haven’t you? Like, you’re not arguing a whole lot anymore.”

“Oh! Oh. Yeah, I guess. I mean… yeah. You’re totally right.”

“You didn’t notice?” Hunk asked incredulously, and Lance puffed out his cheeks with air before releasing a big breath.

“Nah. Guess not.”

Hunk stared at Lance. Lance stared back.

“That all?” Lance asked.

“I guess,” Hunk said slowly. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

“Yeah, totally!” Lance said, completely over-eager. He punched Hunk on the shoulder harder than usual. “Night dude!”

Hunk stared after him. He blinked once. Twice.

Something weird was  _definitely_  up.

—

Shiro probably wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been for Pidge and Hunk. It was just that they both seemed more  _intense_  than usual. Lance was still loud and Keith was still angry at just about anything he decided to feel angry about, but Pidge seemed extra concentrated and Hunk kept making weird humming noises under his breath which was actually pretty unsettling.

He decided to ask Keith what was up with Pidge and Hunk.

It wasn’t hard to get Keith alone, he was always stalking off to sulk or look broody in some corner or other, but for some reason Shiro  _was_  having trouble. Normally it was easy to find him, checking his usual haunts like the training room and his bedroom and even the kitchen—but he was nowhere to be found.

Shiro realized that maybe it was a little strange to go to Pidge to find out where Keith was so he could ask him about Pidge, but he didn’t really have any other ideas. Plus, Pidge had some kind of crazy intuition—she could almost always figure out where everybody else was.

“Hey Pidge,” Shiro greeted as he stepped into the lab. It was the room Pidge spent most of her time in. The desks were strewn with half-abandoned projects and scrap pieces but if anyone dared to touch any of it Pidge would probably murder them. No one knew exactly what would happen if they  _did_  touch it because none of them were crazy enough to try.

“Hey Shiro!” Pidge answered, spinning around on her chair to look at him. “What’s up?”

Looking at her, Shiro was hit—as he almost always was—with just how young she was. How young they  _all_  were, really. They’d all been dragged into this war, so random, so brutal, and yet no one ever complained. They just embraced it. Pidge carried half the team sometimes with her genius ideas. Lance made light of any and every situation, just so they wouldn’t despair over whatever trouble they were actually in. Keith ran blindly into everything, as if he hadn’t a care whether he lived or died. Hunk always kept a solid head on his shoulders, always thought things through and refused to let anyone give up hope. And still they were all so young, all so undeserving of the sheer terror of a  _war_  resting on their shoulders—Shiro would take the weight of it all, if he could.

“I was just wondering,” Shiro finally said after clearing his throat, forcing himself out of his own thoughts, “if you knew where Keith was?”

To his surprise, a coy grin found its way onto Pidge’s face. It pulled her lips up almost scarily. “You’ve noticed too?”

“Noticed what?” Shiro managed, frowning in confusion. That quickly, the look on Pidge’s face was gone.

“Oh. Whatever,” she said hastily, shaking her head.

There was a pause.

“So?” Shiro prompted. “Any idea where he might be?”

Pidge closed her eyes, pursing her lips. “Lance’s room,” she finally said with a smile. Shiro frowned again, sure she was wrong, but… Well, whenever was she?

And so he made his way back through the halls, back towards Keith’s room, and instead of knocking on the familiar door, he turned to Lance’s. He’d never been in Lance’s room before, never really had any need to. Still, if Pidge thought Keith was in here… Maybe they were talking about a recent mission together or something. They  _had_  had to spy on some Galra generals not too long ago. Shiro knew sometimes he felt like discussing their missions further, even after they’d already gone over it all by the time they got back to the castleship.

Shiro knocked on Lance’s door. It was automatic, but only to the room’s owner—for everyone else it waited for permission.

“Um? Come in?” Lance’s voice called unsurely. When the doors slid open Shiro found Lance laying on his bed, one knee bent and the other leg stretched out before him. He rose his eyebrows when he saw Shiro.

“Oh! Shiro—I was expecting, um. I mean. What are you doing here? Are we training or something?”

“No, sorry,” Shiro muttered, suddenly feeling like he was intruding. “Pidge told me Keith might be in here, I don’t know.”

“Crazy how she does that,” Lance muttered, shaking his head. Shiro raised an eyebrow. “Well he  _was_  here a few minutes ago. Just, you know. Talking. He’s probably back in his own room now?”

“Okay. Thanks,” Shiro managed. “Sorry.”

“Not a problem!” Lance called after him, the automatic doors sliding shut as he left. Shiro came to a stop before Keith’s door, raising his fist to knock. But he didn’t. Because… Well, because maybe there wasn’t something up with Pidge in the first place—or Hunk.

He furrowed his eyebrows, staring down at his feet as he thought. No, they weren’t really acting that weird after all, were they? Sometimes they’d get obsessed with something and kind of ignore everything else until they’d gotten to the bottom of it, but usually not at the same time. Usually not at the same  _thing_. But maybe this time, maybe this thing…

Well, just maybe it was another pair that was being odd. Shiro tapped his metal fingers against his thumb, from his index to his pinky and back again. It was a strange habit he’d picked up and hadn’t been able to drop for some reason, but it was comforting nonetheless.  _One, two, three four. One, two, three, four._

With a small shrug Shiro turned and went back down the hall, figuring he didn’t need to bother Keith.  _One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four._  Whatever it was, the two of them could figure it out themselves.

—

Allura frowned at her bowl of breakfast goo. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong  _necessarily_ , it was just that, well… something was different. And she was sick of it.

Or, more specifically, she was sick of being left  _out_  of it. She was aware that she was constantly being excluded from the rest of the team’s shenanigans. She figured it had something to do with being the Altean princess and the one in charge. Maybe everyone else thought it was wrong to invite her to watch movies with them or to play cards, but it wasn’t. And she was bored out of her mind!

And what was a tragically bored princess supposed to do other than to secretly catch up on the affairs of everyone in her castle? Sure, that might  _sound_  like spying, but it certainly wasn’t. It was just… secretly catching up on everyone’s affairs. Privately. Without any of them knowing.

And she found out plenty of useful things this way! Surely it couldn’t be bad when she was so entertained by it?

For one thing, she realized that Hunk was a good singer. He only ever did it when he thought he was alone but hearing his voice made her wish that he did it  _all the time_. It was deep and beautiful and made her feel like dancing again, something she hadn’t done since a few years before the war truly began. And she learned that Pidge could sleep literally anywhere—she curled up at odd hours of the day in completely random places, almost like a cat. Allura had come across her laying on top of the kitchen cabinets once, and just… how had she even gotten up there?

She’d done enough spying on Coran in her life for nothing truly interesting in that department to be revealed, though that didn’t stop her from doing so anyway. Still, nothing exciting was gleaned in her efforts besides the fact that he apparently liked to talk to himself which, really, maybe shouldn’t have been such a surprise.

What  _was_  a surprise was that after missions Shiro walked and walked and walked around the ship, following pathways completely randomly. Sometimes he would reach up and rub at his shoulder, where metal melded with skin, and Allura wondered if it was something that bothered him often, if it was painful.

She learned that Lance, apparently, spoke Spanish to himself when he was alone. She’d just pressed her ear against his door, merely curious as she hadn’t seen him all day anyway, when she’d heard—  _“Oh mierda!_ I’m… Fuck, I— _Dios mierda. Dios.”_

She also learned that Keith could be pretty tricky to track down. Her first place to check was always the training room. If he wasn’t there then she was sure she wasn’t going to be able to find him. She almost thought that he was doing it on purpose, stubbornly refusing to let himself be found. It only made her all the more determined to find him, to figure out what he was up to.

—

Coran paused, speechless, as he stood in the middle of the hall. Against the wall, quite a ways from him, were two paladins. Of course, on earth what they were doing might mean something different, but… Well, what else could kissing mean, really?

Lance had Keith pressed against the wall, his hands cupping his face. Keith’s hands were resting on Lance’s hips, pulling him closer, and Coran decided that it just wasn’t his business.

He turned around and left. It wasn’t like anyone else had to know.

—

Lance was in love with Keith.

Or… he was pretty sure he was, anyway. If he wasn’t then he was well on his way to getting there.

It’d only been a few weeks since they’d started getting so much closer. Sleepless nights spent in each other’s company, talking about anything and everything they could think of. Lance told Keith about his family, about his parents and his older siblings, about his nieces and nephews. He told him about visiting his grandparents in Cuba and about his favorite beach. He told him about genuinely loving the Garrison, and about how he was afraid he would amount to nothing, never truly pass, never be able to fly like he wanted to.

And Keith told him everything, too. He told him about being in the foster care system, about going from family to family, about getting his hopes up again and again only for them to be crushed brutally underfoot every time. He told him about the loneliness of it all, his inability to make friends because of it. He told him about how he aged out of the system, how he’d never even had a real family until now, until Voltron. He talked all about how the only constant in his life, really, had been the internet, where he’d browsed endless sites and learned everything he could and always got way too deep into conspiracy theories.

They talked so much, so often, that sometimes they just talked themselves to sleep. Sometimes Lance would wake up with the worst pain in his neck, only to find Keith curled into a ball, his cheek smushed against the metal floor, right across from him. Lance figured it started happening then—the flutter in his stomach, the breathless, nervous sensation in his chest. Lance had tried to shake it off; a crush on someone he spent every single day with could in no way be good for him, but it was unshakeable.

And Keith, it turned out, didn’t really have boundaries. He’d spent so long without being close to anyone, so long being on his own and in solitude, it would really make sense for him to be most comfortable that way, to think hugging and cuddling was weird. Except, no, nope, not at all. He was like a cat starved for touch—as soon as it started happening he was addicted to it.

He would stand utterly still, this odd look on his face, just waiting for Lance to hug him like he had once before. Once Lance deciphered that look, he realized that Keith gave it to him  _every night_  before bed (on the nights they actually managed to stand and stumble into their own rooms, that is). And it only progressed from there! Lance would grab his hand to drag him somewhere and show him something, and when they arrived Keith simply wouldn’t let go. And one night Lance offered for them to hang out in his room for a while, to talk on his bed, and Keith readily accepted.

It really wasn’t that surprising that they fell asleep together. And even less surprising that they woke up tangled together.

After that it just became habit. Sleeping together was better than sleeping alone—it was warmer, comfier, a hundred times less lonely.

The first time Lance kissed Keith, he seemed surprise. The second time, not at all.

Lance was just glad he kept letting him do it.

—

“When do you think we should tell them?” Keith asked. They were laying on the couch in one of the castle’s many living rooms together. Lance was under him. Keith had made good use of the little room on the couch by simply laying on top of Lance, who didn’t seem to mind at all. He was playing with his fingers, drawing them out and tracing them from palm to tip. His fingers were  _long_ , skinny and tan where Keith’s were shorter, paler.

“Dunno,” Lance said. “Whenever, really. I’m kind of surprised they haven’t noticed.”

“Me too,” Keith murmured. Normally he felt like everyone was pretty on top of things, noticing every minor detail out of place. One time at dinner Keith decided to have a second plate and Hunk had asked him if he was feeling okay. “Maybe they’ve gotten dumber.”

It didn’t matter—Keith didn’t feel in any rush to tell them. He kind of liked having Lance all to himself, anyway. Normally he was loud and obnoxious and made horrible puns that Keith didn’t understand half the time, and when they were alone together he was still all these things. But he was also sweet. He was also soft. He was also smooth, when he wanted to be, when he really tried—the things he said could make Keith blush.

Sometimes when they were in bed together, when things were fast and hot and sharp, when they were panting and gasping in tandem, sometimes Lance even spoke in Spanish. Keith was pretty sure that Lance had caught on that he liked it when he did that—it was dumb, but he couldn’t help thinking it was hot. Sometimes Lance would lean down and whisper something in his ear, something that he couldn’t even comprehend but that slid so easily from his tongue that it had Keith arching into him all the same.

“Unless they all already know,” Lance hummed thoughtfully. “And just aren’t telling us.”

“I don’t think any of them can keep a secret,” Keith pointed out, and Lance hummed in reply.

—

Pidge snorted, pulling the headphone out of her ear. It was like a hearing aid almost, letting her hear things at a certain distance, and she’d been using them to listen in on Lance and Keith. Honestly, did they really believe none of them could keep a secret? If anyone that was  _Lance_.

She huffed and wriggled a bit, trying to get comfier. It was a tight squeeze, but… Pidge fit. Maybe it was a bit extreme to start crawling through the air vents in order to spy on her friends but she was  _bored_ , okay? Drastic times, and all that.

And anyway, this was obviously the best thing she could’ve done. Because she was witnessing  _this_ , Keith laying on Lance, the two of them talking about being  _together_. And they were right! Nobody knew! Well, other than Pidge, of course.

Or so she thought. It was about two seconds later that her eyes zeroed in on Hunk. Across the room. He was peering from behind another couch, just his eyes poking over the edge of the sofa. Pidge narrowed her eyes at him—how dare he spy on them!? Or, erm… so blatantly, anyway?

A sudden clunking somewhere behind Pidge had her twisting her head over her shoulder, breath coming short in her chest. What was it? Had someone snuck into the castle? Were they in the  _vents_?

“Ow,” Allura muttered as she hit her head on the ceiling as she came around the corner. Her eyes widened when she spotted Pidge.

“Pidge,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“…I asked first.”

“I don’t care.”

Allura let out a frustrated groan. “I’m just… looking around. Doing some reconnaissance. You know.”

“You’re spying on Keith and Lance, aren’t you?”

Allura just nodded and Pidge managed to scoot over. If they smushed together, there was just enough room for the two of them to look out through the vent. And so Allura shimmied up next to her, humming in surprise as she saw the position Keith and Lance were in.

“I should’ve realized!” she whispered. “Can’t believe I didn’t guess…”

At that very moment, Shiro came walking past the living room. He paused in the doorway, blinking as he spotted Keith and Lance.

“Hey guys,” he said.

“Aagh!” Keith said in surprise, tumbling to the ground. Lance hauled him back onto the couch. “Er—hey Shiro. We’re dating.” (Allura let out another gasp; across the room, Hunk’s eyes widened at the outright admittance.)

“That’s nice,” Shiro said pleasantly. “Good for you two. Have you seen… well, anyone?”

“No,” Lance said with a shrug. “Have you checked the kitchen?”

“Yep.”

“Control room?”

“Yep.”

“Er—training room?”

“Yep.”

“That’s odd,” Lance said. Pidge could see him frowning from here.

Right then, Coran came running up. He took one look at Keith and Lance, sitting very close together on the couch, then turned to Shiro.

“It’s not what it looks like!” he proclaimed.

“What?” said Shiro.

“They’re just—sitting!”

“We’re dating, Coran,” Lance piped up.

“Oh. You’re admitting it then?”

“You knew?” Keith interjected. Coran shrugged.

“I’m sure I’m the only one.”

“Not true!” Hunk suddenly exclaimed, standing up from behind the couch and pointing at Coran. “I knew! I most definitely knew!”

Keith screamed again, more from surprise than anything else. It  _was_  pretty startling to realize you were being spied on, Pidge was sure.

“Well  _I_  saw them kiss,” Coran said, seeming offended.

“I noticed that they stopped bickering!” Hunk argued. “I knew about it first!”

Pidge gasped, offended. There was no way  _Hunk_  knew before  _her_.

She punched out the screen to the air vent, wriggling out a bit and dangling from the ceiling.

“Liar!” she shouted. “I knew first! I saw them talking in the hallways! And sleeping in the same bed!”

“Well I heard them having sex!” Allura jumped in, which made the room quiet down except for Keith’s indignant splutters—his and Lance’s faces matching colors of crimson.

“How do you—” Lance finally broke the silence.

“You speak Spanish when you’re—”

“AAHHH!” Keith interrupted.

The room exploded into more screaming, everyone sure that it had been  _them_  who knew that the two had been dating the longest.

—

Keith turned to Lance. “I guess we don’t have to break it to them then, huh?” he muttered. His face still felt hot.

Lance just looked at him miserably. “I don’t think I can ever have sex again.”


End file.
